For months, I’ve been hearing commentators — people of intelligence, most of whose utterances I take seriously — talk about AG William Barr’s positions as reflecting his belief in a particular kind of a presidency. (Things like “unitary executive,” “the imperial presidency,” etc.)
His convictions on such matters of political philosophy are said to underpin his arguments to defend Trump’s right to do this and that, and to challenge efforts to hold the president accountable.
I have seen no reason to dignify Barr’s position with any such beliefs, convictions, principles or whatever. His conduct, rather, seems dictated by an altogether amoral calculus according to which he has sold his soul to be close to power.
Might I be wrong about Barr, and his ostensible beliefs about the extent and limits of a President’s rightful powers? I can’t rule it out.
But here’s a test— and it is one that I’d bet heavily that Barr would fail. If we look at the various times William Barr has weighed in with this idea of the unchallengeable President, who was President then?
Barr was attorney general under the first Bush (a Republican), so he was a major figure while Bill Clinton was President and was being hounded by Republicans seeking some way of delegitimizing Clinton’s Presidency, and ultimately impeaching him for basically private conduct.
Did we hear from Barr then, about how the President should be sheltered from such harassment?
And then during Barack Obama’s presidency, while the Republicans were doing everything in their power to nullify the American people’s having hired Obama to perform the role of President, ultimately including an illegitimate strategy to nullify Obama’s constitutional right to name a Justice to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, did William Barr speak up then to defend the importance of letting the President wield his powers?
If not — and I would bet not — everyone should stop talking about Barr’s principles when the evidence (including his misrepresentations of the Mueller Report) suggests he has none, that he’s the proper “Roy Cohn” of an Attorney General to go along with the sociopath in the Oval Office.